The Quest for Victory

by Rob Kothe on 28 Dec 2008
Quest skipper Bob Steel was his usual relaxed self this afternoon as it became obvious that his TP52 had won the battle in a tightly fought division; Quest had become favourite to take the overall IRC win in the 64th Rolex Sydney Hobart race.

‘Seriously we’ve got a very good yacht. I think it’s probably one of the leading TP52s in Australia. We’ve won quite a number of regattas. We won Geelong Race Week earlier this year; we won the SSORC Regatta; we’ve won two Division A’s of the Sydney to Southport Yacht Race.

'It has credentials, and the crew are experienced Hobart sailors mixed with a couple of guys that have never sailed on the Hobart before, so they’re absolutely thrilled and stoked to be on board. If we have won then that will be the boat trip of a lifetime,’ Steel said.

When asked if a second win would be better than his Quest win in 2002, he replied, ‘I think the first one is always probably going to be right up there, but as an old fella’ I’ll certainly take a number two win.’

Steel described how Quest had lost by seven minutes in 1995 after they’d been declared the provisional winners for 30 hours.

In 2002 Zeus II kept Quest pacing the dock before Quest was declared the overall handicap winner. Quest had finished the race for 24 hours before and Zeus II, a 30 footer, had to finish by 10.08am. Quest’s crew went to bed convinced that Zeus II had won, because they were in Storm Bay.

‘When I woke up the next morning my charming wife said they’re still in the river, and I said that’s no bloody good to me, what part of the river? So I flew up at her and we rushed down to the dock.

‘Zeus missed out by the same seven minutes – what we had missed by in 1995. They were half a mile from the finish when the time expired, then they got a 20 knot breeze that blew them home, so it’s a funny old business, isn’t it?’ Steel observed.

When asked what the best part of the race was for Quest, Steel commented that the first night went particularly well.

‘We got a break on our competitors, so that was when we started doing things right. We had a fairly average start for ourselves out of Sydney Heads; we were probably third or fourth, maybe even the fifth TP52 out the heads, so we settled down and got through most of them.

‘There were a couple of critical tactical decisions, we just worked away and had a bit of luck, and found out the next day that they had paid dividends,’ he said.

The race was fairly uneventful for Quest, which luckily avoided two giant sun fish.

According to Steel, there was plenty of wind on the course so the sailors had to ‘knuckle down.’

Quest’s timing for their trip up the Derwent River was perfect. ‘Yachting is a funny game. We figured the best time to come up the river was 10am, and I think we were right on the money there,’ Steel said.

But in the Sydney to Hobart is always full of surprises. A hard westerly hit Hobart as a group of TP52s, including Quest, were 100 metres from the finish line. Steel thought that any one the boats could lose their rigs in the gale.

‘I thought that was going to be a sensational media opportunity but luckily for us all, it did not happen,’ he said.

The weather favoured Quest throughout the race. When asked if he had put rum in the water as an offering to the weather gods, Steel replied ...‘No. I had shot at the end of my night watch and that seemed to help.’